life

I’m Terrible At What I Do!

Posted on by magicrat_larry

I’m throwing it out there, I am terrible at what I do and love.  It takes guts to say it.  I’m finally doing it.  I am abysmal at making games.  Yup, if I had to make a game I would simply fail miserably.  Wow, that feels good just to type out.  A giant weight is lifted from my shoulders and now I can go back to making games.

Odd, why would I go back to making what I just said I was terrible at?  I must be nuts right?  Well, yeah!  The truth is I am bad at it.  I am excellent at 3D math, game vision, hyping an idea to the point of everyone being on board, I’m good at a lot of things.  I just cannot put an entire game together alone.  If I did not have others I would be the sum of me, which is terrible at the complete process of game development.

I have others, I found others and fill my voids, that strengthen my weaknesses.  Without them I would fail every time, and have.  Now say it with me if you have never finished a game, I am terrible at making games!  now go find a buddy that makes you a real game developer.  🙂

Defeat Your Nemesis, Crush Him!

Posted on by magicrat_larry

My biggest enemy, my nemesis, is the Big Picture.  My brain sees a large goal ahead of itself.  It loves to play far into the future and dream big.  This hinders the daily work.  This is my problem.

The best way to defeat your nemesis is to first understand who it is.  Take time to figure out your biggest problem, your nemesis and define it.  If it is defined then you can take steps to crush him.  Yes, I mean crush him.  You don’t want to play around with a nemesis, you want him defeated and gone right?  Don’t put him in a room with an elaborate contraption that will kill him in 3 hours and leave.  Crush him now!

Sorry, I got carried away there, What I do to keep myself motivated on the short term while my brain intently works on the long term plan is create very small goals to get me there.  Small goals lead you, like bread crumbs, to your larger goal, say like a finished game.

If I were to do what my brain wanted to, I would be trying to create an entire game, that is demoralizing quickly.  Instead we plan out small tasks.  these give me the opportunity for Victory over my nemesis daily, if not every few hours or minutes.  This keeps me energized, and excited.  So now I am not just leaving my nemesis to die in an elaborate contraption over time, I’m crushing him one small task at a time.  In the end my large goal will be complete, a nice game for all of you to enjoy.

Hello, Let me Grab This By the Face

Posted on by magicrat_larry

You know what I do?  I see something, I learn it quickly, then I grab it by the face and never let go.  Not sure if this is the right way to do things, but for game development it seems to be a good thing.  See, I love the visual effects, so what did I do?

I saw games, said I wanna do that.  I learned how to do it quickly just by doing things.  I then grabbed it by the face and have never let go since.  What do I mean by grabbing it by the face?  Well, I mean that you don’t just do it, you live it.  To really excel at something, you need to make it part of your life.  Part of your life so much, that if you stopped doing it, you would be left with an empty hole.

So that is what I do, I constantly feel like I’m riding a raging bull an I love every second of it.  Try it for a while and see how fun it is.  Take something you like to do.  Grab it by the face and see what happens.  It’ll hurt, it’ll be exhilarating, but it’ll be worth every second of it.

Game Developer SMASH!!!!

Posted on by magicrat_larry

Let me explain this in three phases and I am sure all you game developers will understand.

Phase 1:  The Plan

Today, my wife and daughter were leaving for about 4 hours and leaving me home to work on the game.  Awesome!!!  So the plan is to crank through the remaining physics task to get the car to not be completely jacked up by a collision with a human sized bug.  So Seems easy, I can crank that out and maybe have some time to play a game or two afterwards.  I’m excited.

Phase 2: Let’s Do This

I sit down after they leave and crack down on this physics thing.  Turns out, this is not easy, go figure.  I bust my butt on it for hours getting nowhere.  No matter what I do I cannot get a good outcome.  I have my car driving and the wheels literally flying off for no reason.  I get frustrated, the doomed feeling sets in.  I did nothing, I think to myself.  Then I hear it, my wife and kid are home, 4 hours are gone, nothing to show for it besides the pure joy of pounding on code that was pointless.  At this point my brain is jumping into the computer and killing all the bad things in violent, terrible, imaginative glory.

Phase 3: Just One More Go

I sit down, right after my wife and daughter go to bed.  I open the laptop, look at the code and see a variable being set in some obscure location in our jacked up proof of concept code.  I start playing with that variable.  It turns out that is the most important thing in my life, I just didn’t know it.  So now I am happy.  What a strange way to be happy huh?

Some Days Just Hurt

Posted on by magicrat_larry

Today seems like one of those days.  One of those days where things just don’t get done.  I tried, but got nowhere, kind of day.  I suppose I tend to have the other kind of day more than this, so that makes these days a bit harder to swallow.

I’m trying to get our physics for driving to balance.  It is not easy to understand.  The problem is I used other peoples math to get this all to “work” properly.  Turns out their math tended to be a rigged in mess.  So now I am attempting to clean that up.  As you can tell, I got nowhere.

The best part is, that these days always build up to a moment where you physically throw your hands in the air and smile with glee when you fix the problems.  That is the light at the end of the tunnel, and what we all do game development for.  I look forward to that moment where this days setup becomes the foundation for a massive victory moment.

Stop the Excuses

Posted on by magicrat_larry

Let me say this up front, you can make excuses for your entire life and do nothing, or you can change the way you live and accomplish things.

Yes, I’m saying it, the problem is you.  If you ever stop and wish your life was different, it is because of you.  You think you don’t have the time, or energy, but you do.  See, something like developing a game takes a massive amount of commitment.  That commitment has to be unwavering.  If it wavers you are back to wishing your life was different again.

Stop the excuses, get out of bed, or off the couch, and just do something.  Pick anything, and do it.  There is not that much time to live here on Earth.  Do you really want your final moments to be filled with excuses of why you could not do anything?  If every one of you started to work 1 hour a day, we would be living on Mars, using warp drives, have peace on Earth, and have a better mouse trap.

Start working people, it’s easier than coming up with the reasons why you didn’t.

The Glamorous World of Game Development

Posted on by magicrat_larry

I think there is a misconception, game development is such a great job, all the fun, all the excitement, all the joy of Christmas every day.  I’m sorry, that is not true.  Let me explain what game development is like for me, and remember I love it.

You get up early, look at your task list, if you are lucky there is a task on there that sounds fun.  You begin working on that task, it expands to a large programming mess.  You stop programming and design a better system to fix or create whatever you were doing.  If you are lucky once the task is complete the game still compiles and nothing different is displayed.

I know there are some days where you create that awesome effect that changes the look and feel of everything, but most days are debugging, tweaking, or designing.  If you throw in marketing you got a real nice day.  See, game development is one of the hardest programming jobs you can have.  It is not like business software, you actually care about memory usage and display rate.

The next time you are sitting at home playing some game, and think how great it would be to be a game developer, stop and think of the massive effort, stubborn commitment, and tears it took to put that game together.  Then smile and keep playing.

Be Something For Real

Posted on by magicrat_larry

I’m learning recently that there are many people in the world of game development, or even regular Tech careers who are pretending to be one of whatever they are doing.  What I mean is they act like a programmer, web designer, or game developer, but they do not truly, either believe they are one, or love it at all.

If you are in game development, or your career, for anything other than the love of it, you are on the wrong path.  Don’t take this road, it is an unhappy mess for you.  Nothing will satisfy you if you do.  Choose what you love, not what is the new awesome thing everyone else acted like they loved in college.  Take the world by the face by understanding yourself and what you truly want and leave the careers to others that you do not love.  You will enjoy life a ton more, be something, but be something for real, not for money, or popularity.